O.C.’s Rebecca Black conquers the world in 2011

Rebecca Black says she's handled the Internet fame she found this year with a laugh, a smile and a personality that she describes as including traits of being "quirky" and "weird" at times. "I have my moments when I question how I have any friends," she says, laughingly, as she talked about her goofier characteristics.PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Rebecca Black walks down the hallway of a Los Angeles TV studio, a small entourage trailing her leopard-print stiletto heels, when suddenly the sound of "Friday" -- the song that turned this Orange County teen into the Internet sensation of 2011 – drifts through the open door of the studio control room.

Rebecca seems not to notice, her mind on the interview ahead with the KTLA Morning News team on Thursday. And on some level, why would she? She's certainly heard her song and seen her video countless times in the year since she recorded it as something of an expensive lark, a project she figured only her family and friends would likely ever see.

But beyond that, it also must feel like "Friday" happened in some other lifetime, given the whirlwind that swept her out of middle-school obscurity to worldwide fame – or infamy, depending on your point of view – since the video went viral in March and exploded into the love-it-or-hate-it song of the year.

How much has happened in the nine months since then? A few highlights: Rebecca co-starred in Katy Perry's video for "Last Friday Night" and later popped up on stage with Perry to sing "Friday" with her at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. She appeared as a presenter at the Teen Choice Awards – and won the Choice Award as Web Star of the year – and also popped up at the MTV Video Music Awards. She released two more singles and videos, "My Moment" and "Person Of Interest." Lady Gaga tweeted words of support. She posed for a photograph in the No H8 campaign.

"They're definitely great lists to be on," Rebecca says. "I don't think it's really sunk in yet that this little kid from Orange County is on the top of Google Zeitgeist and YouTube."

Those year-end honors brought a new rush of requests for interviews, so on Thursday we caught up with Rebecca in Los Angeles, as she set out for interviews with KTLA, E! and Hollywoodlife.com, to watch how she handles the media spotlight and catch up with her about all that she experienced in the nine months after she burst onto the pop culture landscape,

"It doesn't feel real at all," she says as she starts to talk about how life has changed. "I try to think, 'Why haven't I freaked out over some of the things that have happened?' "

* * *

On the set at KTLA, Rebecca looks comfortable. She's done interviews with reporter Sam Rubin before, but she says she seldom gets nervous anymore in the public eye. "I assume you got paid?" Rubin asks her at one point. "Yeah, yeah, I got paid," Rebecca tells him, smiling. "But a lot of the money goes to pay for things."

* * *

When we met Rebecca in March, it was just days after "Friday" had gone viral and she had just gotten home from school when we arrived at her house for the first interview she'd ever done with anyone. At the time, she and family seemed almost in shock over all the YouTube views for "Friday," which at the time had only – "only" -- 13 million of the nearly 200 million it would eventually reach.

She talked about sticking to her normal routines, school and friends and trips to the mall, while also seeing where all this attention might lead, but in the weeks that followed, the bright glare of her new-found fame overran any semblance of normalcy. Soon, demands for her time outside of school – interviews with everyone from Ryan Seacrest to Jay Leno and that offer to work in Katy Perry's video – as well as continued verbal abuse from other kids prompted her to leave her school for studies at home.

"There was one morning when I woke up and said, 'Mom, we have to try it, because it's really hard,'" says Rebecca of home schooling, which she's continued for her ninth-grade studies this year. "You can try to make up tests but you can only miss so many lessons."

As for bullying by other kids, which was reported earlier this year as the cause for her leaving school, that was more of a secondary reason, she says. "I'd not ever really been picked on until the 'Friday' thing started," Rebecca says. "They would chat me on Facebook and say, 'Your song sucks,' or 'People only buy your song because it sucks.'

Rebecca Black says she's handled the Internet fame she found this year with a laugh, a smile and a personality that she describes as including traits of being "quirky" and "weird" at times. "I have my moments when I question how I have any friends," she says, laughingly, as she talked about her goofier characteristics. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black strikes a pose inside the Champagne Dressing Room at the headquarters of the E! television network in Los Angeles. While she was getting her makeup and hair touched up for the second of three TV or online interviews on Tuesday she got word from her mother, Georgina Marquez, that she had caught her daughter's earlier appearance on the KTLA Morning News. "My mom saw the interview and thought it was great!" Rebecca told her manager Debra Baum from the makeup chair. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black says that perhaps the greatest highlight of a year filled with many was when she heard that Katy Perry wanted her to act in her video for "Last Friday Night." "I think I was in my room on my computer and my mom called me, 'Rebecca! Rebecca!'" she says. "And I said, 'What?' And it was just, 'Katy wants you to star in her video!' And I think I literally fell over. I fell to the floor. I was like, 'What? Wow!'" PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black was a teenager in Orange County a year ago, but her song and video "Friday" made her an Internet sensation in 2011. On Thursday, she returned to KTLA-TV to chat with entertainment reporter Sam Rubin. Here she waits in the green room. A few minutes later, during a commercial break before the segment began, Rubin joked with her they both lucked into their success. "After having this success we don't know what to do with it," Rubin told his colleagues on the news team. "And we don't know how it happened in the first place!" PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black cracks up as she tapes a bit for the Golden Globes red carpet show at the E! television network in Los Angeles. In it, she's supposed to be a diva, demanding that she get to sing her lines to "give the people what they want." When the interviewer protests, she storms off in mock outrage. Her poise showed in her ability to nail it in two or three takes, acting outraged at the affront to her and her millions of fans only until the scene ended, after which she broke into giggles at the silliness of her character. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
E! News reporter Kristina Guerrero, center, walks with Rebecca Black after interviewing her in Los Angeles last week. Asked how she handles some of the amazing measures of fame she's experienced this year Black said it sometimes doesn't hit her right away. "I honestly hear about those things and I'm surprisingly calm," she said."I hit big landmarks like 100 million (views) on the video, I'm surprisingly calm. And then I'm like, 'Oh. My. God!'" PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black chats with KTLA entertainment reporter Sam Rubin on the morning news last week, answering questions like what was the most exciting call you got from a celebrity (Katy Perry), and how do you deal with the negative comments people make about your songs. "The good definitely outweighs the bad," she told Rubin. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black laughs with Sam Rubin on the KTLA Morning News on Thursday. "I assume you got paid?" Rubin asked her at one point. "I mean, your accountant must be happy." She agreed that yes, she had made some money this year, but later explained that most of it has been plowed back into her career, such as funding her second and third singles and videos which allows her to own them outright. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Rebecca Black's personal make-up artist, Julianne Kaye, touches up Black's hair as she waits to go on air at KTLA's morning show. When her song and video "Friday" went viral in March, Rebecca had just cut her hair in bangs, which with her school uniform made her look younger than she does today with the polish and style of a teen pop star with a makeup and hair artist on retainer. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Internet phenomenon Rebecca Black seems entirely comfortable with the work of interviews with the media, waiting patiently for her makeup to be touched up, chatting cheerfully to answer all manner of questions about her unique career. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The teleprompter at the KTLA studios refers to Rebecca Black's video "Friday," the most-viewed on all of YouTube in 2011. What did it beat out? "Ultimate Dog Tease" finished second, followed by the Lonely Island comedy troupe's "Jack Sparrow" video that featured Michael Bolton. After that you had the twin babies chatting gibberish in the kitchen and Nyan cat in fourth and fifth places. PHOTO BY MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
One of the first award shows that Rebecca Black attended this year was the inaugural O Music Awards held by MTV in Las Vegas in April. The awards, which honor online and digital music categories, invited Rebecca to give the Fan Army FTW Award, which went -- thanks the votes of fans -- to Tokio Hotel. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY ETHAN MILLER, GETTY IMAGES
Rebecca Black and Lucas Neff, star of "Raising Hope" on Fox, present an award at the Teen Choice Awards in August. Rebecca also won the Choice Award for Web Star of 2011. We asked her where she keeps that trophy -- which actually is a full-sized surfboard -- and were surprised to hear that it takes the TCAs nine months to get all the trophies made and delivered to winners. When it does come it will go in her room, which coincidentally was recently done over into a beach theme. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY KEVIN WINTER, GETTY IMAGES
On April Fool's Day, the comedy website Funny or Die made itself over into Friday or Die in honor of Rebecca Black, who also appeared in videos on the site making fun of some of the craziness that erupted around her and her song "Friday" a few weeks earlier. Rebecca's manager, Debra Baum, says that marked a turning point in opinions on Rebecca, with more people realizing just how likeable and sweet she was after she made the self-deprecating videos for Funny or Die. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rebecca Black arrives at the premiere of "Glee: The 3D Concert Movie" in Westwood in August. Her song "Friday" earned one piece of pop culture credibility when it was picked up to be used in the TV series "Glee," and later performed by the "Glee" cast in the national concert tour. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY FRAZER HARRISON, GETTY IMAGES
Rebecca Black says she considers attending awards shows or movie premieres a nice trade-off for missing out on homecoming and other high school dances now that she's attending the ninth grade through an online school. "I have seven different teachers and seven different subjects," she says of the school she's virtually attending this year. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY DAVID LIVINGSTON, GETTY IMAGES
Rebecca Black walks the red carpet at the premiere of "Prom" at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood in April. Among her few splurges with money earned in her career this year were a $900 pair of red leather pants that she bought for a TV performance in Chicago ("Business expense!" she says, laughing, as she mentions this.) and a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes she bought to wear to the MTV Video Music Awards. "Not the ones that cost thousands, but hundreds, and I would have never done that without this," she says of her career. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY KEVIN WINTER, GETTY IMAGES
Rebecca Black arrives at Variety's 5th Annual Power of Youth event at Paramount Studios in October. Still just 14, her parents accompany her on almost all of her outings, which so far in 2011 have included trips to Australia, New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and Cabo San Lucas. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY JASON MERRITT, GETTY IMAGES
Rebecca Black arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles in August. She appeared in a bit on the show as part of a diva-esque Joe Jonas' demand to have provided for him backstage "Rebecca Black in a dinosaur suit doing the Dougie," which she gamely did. TEXT BY PETER LARSEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER POLK, GETTY IMAGES

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